This invention relates to digital objects and associated rights and payments.
By a "digital object" we broadly mean any set of sequences of bits or digits and an associated unique identifier which we call a "handle". A digital object may incorporate information or material in which rights (e.g., copyright rights) or other interests are or may be claimed. There may also be rights associated with the digital object itself. Thus digital objects may include conventional digital representations of works (books, papers, images, sounds, software), and more broadly any digital material which is capable of producing desired manifestations for a computer user. Thus, a digital object could include programs and data which, though not directly a representation of the text of a work, enable the delivery over a network and the subsequent reproduction on a computer screen of selected portions of the text of the work. By the notion of rights which are or may be claimed in a digital object, we mean rights which exist under statute (e.g., copyright, patent, trade secret, trademark), or as a result of private action (e.g., via secrecy, cooperative ventures, or negotiation).
Rights are normally protected under the law by mechanisms that are paper-based. Patent and trademark applications are prosecuted by exchanges of paper with the Patent and Trademark Office. Trade secret rights are often protected by appropriate legends on paper, and by physically guarding paper copies against disclosure. Registration of claims in copyright is largely based on a paper system. Registration systems generally involve providing physical copies (sometimes voluminous) to the registering authority of the object to be registered.
Holders of rights may get value from those rights by allowing others to copy, use, or perform the object covered by the rights in exchange for consideration (e.g., a photographer may sell copies of his photographs). In some situations there may no need for negotiation of the terms, which may be simple and well understood. The working out of compensation may be done automatically by private clearing house operations, such as the Copyright Clearance Center (as to photocopying) or ASCAP and BMI (in the music field).
In other situations the rights holders may derive value by granting to others exclusive rights to disseminate the object in exchange for a royalty (e.g., a book author grants a publisher the North American paperback distribution rights). Exclusive rights are typically subject to direct negotiation.
It is common to provide for central registration of ownership and other exclusive rights so that others may know the timing and terms of those rights.
Making digital objects available on networks (e.g., Internet), gives rise to at least four specific activities of concern. The first is the ease of movement of digital objects already contained in a computer network environment allowing the creation of multiple copies in multiple machines in fractions of a second. The second is the importation of external information, such as print material or isolated CD-ROM based material, which must first be scanned or read into the system before it can be used. The third is export of internal network based information to paper using digital printers or facsimile machines or copying to separable media such as tape or DAT for external transport to others. The fourth is that digital objects may be easily manipulated on a computer to produce derivative works. The derivative works can also be easily moved about in a computer network environment and be subject to further manipulation by other parties. Parallel and concurrent manipulation can generate an exponential proliferation of derivative works.
Several technologies are known for handling privacy and authentication in a digital network environment, including public key cryptography, digital signatures, privacy enhanced mail, and notarization.